Matt Gurney: Ontario Tories have lots of good reasons to target union monopolies

Union Membership and Labor Mobility: Ontario Tories have lots of good reasons to target union monopolies

The Ontario Progressive Conservatives, led by Tim Hudak, have released another of their white papers, which seek to define the party as a true right-leaning alternative to the Dalton McGuinty-led Liberals. The first dealt with energy policy — a worthy topic, and one certainly of import in Ontario, if a bit wonky. The second, released Wednesday, takes on Ontario’s labour laws — specifically, it calls for union membership to be made voluntary.

This is all in the guise of strengthening Ontario’s economy, of course. “Over the ten-year period of 2001 to 2010, [U.S.] states that gave workers a choice [to join a union] saw 11 per cent higher economic growth, 11 per cent higher personal income growth and a 3 per cent increase in employment growth, versus a 1 per cent decline in states where some form of union dues are mandatory,” the white paper approvingly notes.

But it also cites issues of workers’ conscience and their right not to have their union dues go to support political causes, valued by the union leadership, that may not be close to the individual union member’s heart (and may be, in fact, in direct opposition to their own political or religious views). The white paper cites union money flowing to support campaigns against Israel, plastic water bottles and the Quebec tuition fee hikes.

Those are all valid examples, and a serious issue. That unions in Canada have shown a bad habit of becoming self-serving operations distant from their worker would be disputed by few. But there was one other cause the Ontario PCs didn’t mention when referencing crusading unions — keeping the Ontario PCs out of office.

On Monday, the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled against the PCs in their long-running feud with the Working Families Coalition. The coalition, an umbrella group for some of Ontario’s largest public-sector unions, including teachers and nurses, spent millions of dollars ahead of the last provincial election on advertising harshly critical of the PCs. The PCs sought to have the operation shut down, claiming that Working Families was in effect a front for the Ontario Liberal Party, and that its spending on ads should be counting against the Liberals’ campaign spending limits. The Court upheld a previous ruling that that could not be proven, a move the lawyer for Working Families heralded as a blow struck in defence of the democratic rights of his clients to free speech.

It is that, I suppose. In truth, both sides of this debate are right. By constantly bombarding the PCs with negative advertising, Working Families is effectively doing some of the dirty work for the Liberals. The PCs aren’t wrong about that. But Working Families doesn’t need to be affiliated with the Liberals in any formal way to agree with them that the PCs should be kept out of power. Proving a connection was always going to be difficult, if not impossible, and the PCs have done little but get themselves on the hook for $100,000 worth of Working Families’ legal bills. Which, ironically, will pay for an anti-PC ad or two.

The far better approach is the one they’re taking now. Breaking up Ontario’s massive public-sector unions, or at least whittling them down to a more manageable size, is a good idea for all sorts of reasons. It’ll be good for the Ontario government, whichever party happens to be at the head of it, because wages are Ontario’s biggest single cost item. If the province is going to get back to black, it can’t do that without paying fewer people less generous salaries. It’ll hopefully be good for Ontario’s economy, which has lagged both in terms of productivity and income growth for years, and has seen its manufacturing sector shrivel and die as companies have relocated to jurisdictions where costs of labour are lower. And it’ll even be good for Ontario’s union members, many of whom see some value in union membership in theory, but don’t get much back for the money that is stripped, on a compulsory basis, off their paycheques.

And, hey, it might just be a good thing for the Ontario PCs, too! If they do the right thing and make this white paper part of their next election platform, and win, as they strip away some of the power of the province’s biggest unions, they’ll talk a lot about how great this will be for the economy, and mean it. But they’ll also be happy for another reason — Liberal front or not, Working Families and other groups like it will have been dealt a major blow.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.